Hi there, I am new to this forum but have been made aware of the recent offer of 20,000 air miles MBNA were giving on their BMI classic card. My partner and I have both applied and received the cards. When I called to activate them I was told that the air miles will only be added to my account after I have made my first purchase, which i can understand. They then went on to tell me that it will take up to 20 days from the intital purchase for the miles to be added to my account! Can anyone let me know if this is correct? We are hoping to fly to Russia in the middle of July for a friends wedding and feel this may be cutting it a little too fine if it takes another 20 days before we can book our tickets as availability will no doubt be poor by then. If this is the case we may well have to book full price tickets after all!

This is the case, and in many cases it has taken longer. Also, availability for Air Miles flights on Star Alliance partners is limited. Its not a case of just being able to use the miles and thats it. There are a limited number of 'air miles' flights for each flight and even holding a Star Alliance Gold card wont get you onto a flight if they are all taken.

Does anyone know how you get your points? I got a letter saying they would be credited within 20 days but I didn't have a diamond account so how would they know where to give the points to? I've just set an account out and there is no place to link to a credit card.

"A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for."

I've just re checked my mail and i got a very insignificant letter back in april telling me my diamond account number. It didn't mention the 20,000 points so I ignored it. Glad I didn't throw it away. I'm going to Russia!!!!! Cheers!

"A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for."

I called up today and got told it would be 60 days from the first transaction on my card when I would get my bonus 20,000 miles. Do you think there is any way I could hurry them to get them sooner? I spent on my card within a week of usng it and have had my first statement and have had a few miles credited for my spending.

This doesn't seem fair, if some people have recieved their miles much more quickly. I know I shouldn't moan and will be happy when I get my miles - I'm just impatient

I've just recieved my MBNA bmi credit card & phoned to activate it & asked about my diamond club account being set up. The girl gave me a number but when I tried to log in on the website it did not recognise the number or my email address. Like Katgodess I could not find anywhere on profile page to link to credit card so I did not continue. Do I wait to recieve something else in the mail? Am I just too impatient?

I have had nothing but problems with this. I got "conned" into taking a card out with the promise of the equivalent of two free flights and diamond club membership at the airport in November 2010 on the way to Israel. At the time I thought it would be great just to use the card to get the airmiles which would pay for Manchester to Heathrow should we be able to go again in the future. At the very least I could use them to go to London anyway.

Countless times my email/membership/password have never been recognised, and I have had to ring up to try and get it sorted. The first time was because I had set up the account manually, then found out like another poster has said, you get one set up for you with a welcome letter. They never told me this would happen. Eventually they merged the two accounts but even now I can't login again and am in the process of having a 'password reminder' sent again.

The one time I did manage to login in was for a return flight to Edinburgh but could I get one - not for 3 months! Unlike the normal Airmiles or Avios as it is now, there doesn't seem to be anywhere near the amount of decent availability unless you wait for weeks and weeks. At the time of writing this I am trying again to login to see if there is anything for Edinburgh but I don't hold out much hope at this short notice. I can see eventually I will have to plan to use them for maybe something I don't really want to use, just so they don't go to waste. The worry of that is if I am unable to go at the time as I have frequent health problems.

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